About winter hiking...

Senior Citizens Underhanded Mountain Baggers and Adirondack Geriatric Society.

Since I turn 60 (OMG!) this year I feel the defination of "Senior Citizen" needs to be re-defined.

I have always defined "Senior Citizen" as five years older than I am, and see no need to modify that definition

Mohamed Ellozy said:

I have always defined "Senior Citizen" as five years older than I am, and see no need to modify that definition

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Two thumbs up here! If we stay in shape, we will never get 'old'.

On Monday, we met a couple who'd come down from Washington, crossing the cog tracks at the Jewell Spur re-route. She was 73 and he was 77 years young. They do "at least one big mountain every week"...

Tim

bikehikeskifish said:

On Monday, we met a couple who'd come down from Washington, crossing the cog tracks at the Jewell Spur re-route. She was 73 and he was 77 years young. They do "at least one big mountain every week"...

Tim

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I am pretty sure I know who you mean ...Charlie and Nancy Foote?

What Mohamed said.

Perhaps I'll start to play golf when I grow up (I'll be 64 in July).

One point I like to make is that getting older is a good thing. To stop getting older is a bad thing.

I also will keep hiking as long as I can bend over to put on snowshoes....

una_dogger said:

I am pretty sure I know who you mean ...Charlie and Nancy Foote?

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I did not ask their names, nor did I take a photo... if you have one, I would probably recognize them.

Tim

You don't stop hiking because you get old, you get old because you stop hiking.

I have a close friend and lifetime hiking companion. Until about last year, he averaged 750 hiking miles a year and anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000 vertical feet a year through his 70's and just turned 82.

He has always been a generation older, but always been able to keep up with us 'younger' hikers and exemplified what Dave wrote.

This is actually an interesting topic. One of my favorite people that I correspond with about the outdoors is a gray-haired uncle that spends much of his time in Arizona. He's a lifelong outdoors type with an Eagle Scout patch to prove it. But still, when I think of myself 30 years down the road, I have a tough time envisioning myself rambling around the Northeast mountains. I'd like to think that I'll still be doing it, but who knows, the rocking chair doesn't seem like such a bad place after a life well-lived.

Many of the newer hikers in the whites may not have met or heard of Charlie Reed from Gorham NH. He ran the Mt Washington foot race every year into his eighties and was actively hiking all along. I was at a meeting once and Charlie was in attendence, he was dressed in outdoor clothes and had to leave early as he was camped up on a ridge somewhere on a multiday backpack in the whites and had walked down to his car to attend the meeting, when he left he was heading back up to continue the hike.

Although a mere 56, I take my AARP discount, and look forward to any senior discount offered! Just don't let them see me on the trail with 45 lbs in the pack. Bible says: "Before gray haired ones, you shall rise up." I will race you to the top...

years ago on my first ski/hike trip up to Tuckermans, my girlfriend and I were totally impressed with the 80+ year woman hiking up for the day. Slow and steady, she was out gettin it done! We both commented that she set a fine example of where we hoped to be many years later. I still remember talking to her spry self.